sentinel

Projects that follow the best practices below can voluntarily self-certify and show that they've achieved an Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) best practices badge.

There is no set of practices that can guarantee that software will never have defects or vulnerabilities; even formal methods can fail if the specifications or assumptions are wrong. Nor is there any set of practices that can guarantee that a project will sustain a healthy and well-functioning development community. However, following best practices can help improve the results of projects. For example, some practices enable multi-person review before release, which can both help find otherwise hard-to-find technical vulnerabilities and help build trust and a desire for repeated interaction among developers from different companies. To earn a badge, all MUST and MUST NOT criteria must be met, all SHOULD criteria must be met OR be unmet with justification, and all SUGGESTED criteria must be met OR unmet (we want them considered at least). If you want to enter justification text as a generic comment, instead of being a rationale that the situation is acceptable, start the text block with '//' followed by a space. Feedback is welcome via the GitHub site as issues or pull requests There is also a mailing list for general discussion.

We gladly provide the information in several locales, however, if there is any conflict or inconsistency between the translations, the English version is the authoritative version.
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These are the Baseline Level 2 criteria. These are criteria version v2026.08.28.

Baseline Series: Baseline Level 1 Baseline Level 2 Baseline Level 3

        

 Basics

  • General

    Note that other projects may use the same name.

    The security update management platform for SUSE and openSUSE Linux distributions

    Please use SPDX license expression format; examples include "Apache-2.0", "BSD-2-Clause", "BSD-3-Clause", "GPL-2.0+", "LGPL-3.0+", "MIT", and "(BSD-2-Clause OR Ruby)". Do not include single quotes or double quotes.
    If there is more than one language, list them as comma-separated values (spaces optional) and sort them from most to least used. If there is a long list, please list at least the first three most common ones. If there is no language (e.g., this is a documentation-only or test-only project), use the single character "-". Please use a conventional capitalization for each language, e.g., "JavaScript".
    The Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) is a structured naming scheme for information technology systems, software, and packages. It is used in a number of systems and databases when reporting vulnerabilities.

 Controls 16/19 ●

  • Controls


    Enough for a badge!

    When a CI/CD task is executed with no permissions specified, the CI/CD system MUST default the task's permissions to the lowest permissions granted in the pipeline. [OSPS-AC-04.01]
    Configure the project's settings to assign the lowest available permissions to new pipelines by default, granting additional permissions only when necessary for specific tasks.

    The repository's default workflow permissions are set to read (the minimum). Additionally, every workflow either declares a top-level permissions: block restricting to the minimum required scopes, or declares per-job permissions: on each job individually. No workflow relies on the repository default for write access — elevated permissions (write to packages, pages, issues, pull-requests) are always explicitly requested at the narrowest scope needed.


    Enough for a badge!

    When an official release is created, that release MUST be assigned a unique version identifier. [OSPS-BR-02.01]
    Assign a unique version identifier to each release produced by the project, following a consistent naming convention or numbering scheme. Examples include SemVer, CalVer, or git commit id.

    Every official release is assigned a unique SemVer identifier (e.g. v0.3.0) via release-please automation. The version source of truth is backend/pyproject.toml; on merge of a Release PR, release-please creates a Git tag (v<major>.<minor>.<patch>) and a corresponding GitHub Release with auto-generated changelog. Tags are never reused or manually created — uniqueness is enforced by Git's tag semantics and the automation's monotonic bump logic.


    Enough for a badge!

    When an official release is created, that release MUST contain a descriptive log of functional and security modifications. [OSPS-BR-04.01]
    Ensure that all releases include a descriptive change log. It is recommended to ensure that the change log is human-readable and includes details beyond commit messages, such as descriptions of the security impact or relevance to different use cases. To ensure machine readability, place the content under a markdown header such as "## Changelog".

    Non-trivial release notes file in repository: https://github.com/StayPirate/sentinel/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md. [release_notes]


    Enough for a badge!

    When a build and release pipeline ingests dependencies, it MUST use standardized tooling where available. [OSPS-BR-05.01]
    Use a common tooling for your ecosystem, such as package managers or dependency management tools to ingest dependencies at build time. This may include using a dependency file, lock file, or manifest to specify the required dependencies, which are then pulled in by the build system.

    The build and release pipeline uses uv (with a lockfile uv.lock) to resolve and install Python dependencies deterministically. Dependencies are declared in backend/pyproject.toml using standard PEP 621 metadata, and uv sync --frozen in CI ensures the lockfile is the sole source of installed versions — no ad-hoc pip install or unmanaged dependency resolution occurs during build. The Dockerfile similarly uses uv sync --frozen for reproducible image builds.


    Not enough for a badge.

    When an official release is created, that release MUST be signed or accounted for in a signed manifest including each asset's cryptographic hashes. [OSPS-BR-06.01]
    Sign all released software assets at build time with a cryptographic signature or attestations, such as GPG or PGP signature, Sigstore signatures, SLSA provenance, or SLSA VSAs. Include the cryptographic hashes of each asset in a signed manifest or metadata file.

    Releases are created via release-please with a unique Git tag, but no cryptographic signing or attestation is currently applied. The GitHub Release has no attached assets, no SLSA provenance attestation, no cosign signature, and no signed manifest containing cryptographic hashes of build artifacts. The container images pushed to ghcr.io are similarly unattested (no docker/attest-build-provenance or cosign sign step in build-images.yml).


    Enough for a badge!

    When the project has made a release, the project documentation MUST include a description of how the project selects, obtains, and tracks its dependencies. [OSPS-DO-06.01]
    It is recommended to publish this information alongside the project's technical & design documentation on a publicly viewable resource such as the source code repository, project website, or other channel.

    The project documents its dependency management approach across multiple files: CONTRIBUTING.md describes how to install dependencies (uv sync), docs/deployment.md documents the tooling (uv with lockfile), the CI security gate (pip-audit on every merge), and the Dockerfile build strategy (uv sync --frozen). Dependabot is configured (.github/dependabot.yml) to track and propose updates for three ecosystems — Python/uv, GitHub Actions, and Docker base images — on a weekly schedule. The lockfile (uv.lock) pins exact versions for reproducibility, pip-audit gates every PR against known vulnerabilities, and Dependabot automates tracking of new upstream releases.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project documentation MUST include instructions on how to build the software, including required libraries, frameworks, SDKs, and dependencies. [OSPS-DO-07.01]
    It is recommended to publish this information alongside the project's contributor documentation, such as in CONTRIBUTING.md or other developer task documentation. This may also be documented using Makefile targets or other automation scripts.

    CONTRIBUTING.md provides step-by-step build instructions: install uv, run uv sync (which automatically downloads the correct Python 3.13 interpreter and all dependencies from the lockfile), start infrastructure via ./scripts/dev-env.sh up, run migrations, and launch the server. docs/deployment.md documents the production build process (multi-stage Dockerfile with uv sync --frozen), required infrastructure (PostgreSQL, Redis), and the software requirements table listing all runtime dependencies with minimum versions.


    Not enough for a badge.

    The project documentation MUST include a list of project members with access to sensitive resources. [OSPS-GV-01.01]
    Document project participants and their roles through such artifacts as members.md, governance.md, maintainers.md, or similar file within the source code repository of the project. This may be as simple as including names or account handles in a list of maintainers, or more complex depending on the project's governance.

    This criterion targets projects with shared infrastructure credentials (e.g., production server access, signing keys, package registry tokens). Sentinel's sensitive resources (GitHub repository admin, RELEASE_TOKEN secret, ghcr.io publish permissions) are managed entirely through GitHub's built-in access controls — the repository is owned by a single maintainer (StayPirate). There is no team or multi-person access to sensitive resources that requires a documented roster beyond what GitHub already surfaces in Settings > Collaborators.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project documentation MUST include descriptions of the roles and responsibilities for members of the project [OSPS-GV-01.02]
    Document project participants and their roles through such artifacts as members.md, governance.md, maintainers.md, or similar file within the source code repository of the project.

    CONTRIBUTING.md documents the roles and responsibilities: the repository has a single maintainer/owner responsible for reviewing and merging contributions, managing releases, and triaging security reports. SECURITY.md identifies the security contact role (security@suse.com). The CODEOWNERS mechanism is implicit (single owner); GitHub's collaborator settings surface access levels. For a single-maintainer project this is sufficient — there are no additional roles (committers, release managers, etc.) to document.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project documentation MUST include a guide for code contributors that includes requirements for acceptable contributions. [OSPS-GV-03.02]
    Extend the CONTRIBUTING.md or CONTRIBUTING/ contents in the project documentation to outline the requirements for acceptable contributions, including coding standards, testing requirements, and submission guidelines for code contributors. It is recommended that this guide is the source of truth for both contributors and approvers.

    CONTRIBUTING.md provides a comprehensive contributor guide covering: development environment setup, code style and linting requirements (ruff check, ruff format, mypy --strict), testing requirements (all changes must include tests, pytest must pass), commit message format (Conventional Commits), PR process (title format, issue linkage, required CI checks), and the specs-first workflow (feature specifications must exist before implementation). The document also includes a table of which changes require a specification and which do not.


    Not enough for a badge.

    The version control system MUST require all code contributors to assert that they are legally authorized to make the associated contributions on every commit. [OSPS-LE-01.01]
    Include a DCO in the project's repository, requiring code contributors to assert that they are legally authorized to commit the associated contributions on every commit. Use a status check to ensure the assertion is made. A CLA also satisfies this requirement. Some version control systems, such as GitHub, may include this in the platform terms of service.

    The project does not currently require a DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin) sign-off or equivalent legal assertion on commits. There is no Signed-off-by requirement documented in CONTRIBUTING.md, no DCO bot or GitHub App configured, and no pre-commit hook enforcing the -s flag. Contributors are not required to assert legal authorization to make their contributions.


    Enough for a badge!

    When a commit is made to the primary branch, any automated status checks for commits MUST pass or be manually bypassed. [OSPS-QA-03.01]
    Configure the project's version control system to require that all automated status checks pass or require manual acknowledgement before a commit can be merged into the primary branch. It is recommended that any optional status checks are NOT configured as a pass or fail requirement that approvers may be tempted to bypass.

    Branch protection on master requires all 7 status checks to pass before merge (Backend Lint, Backend Type Check, Backend Security Scan, Backend Tests, Image Smoke Test, Shell Lint, PR Metadata), with strict status checks enabled. Direct pushes to master are blocked — all commits arrive via squash merge of a PR that has passed CI. Bypassing requires admin override (enforce_admins is disabled, allowing the repository owner to bypass in exceptional circumstances — this satisfies the "pass or be manually bypassed" wording).


    Enough for a badge!

    Prior to a commit being accepted, the project's CI/CD pipelines MUST run at least one automated test suite to ensure the changes meet expectations. [OSPS-QA-06.01]
    Automated tests should be run prior to every merge into the primary branch. The test suite should be run in a CI/CD pipeline and the results should be visible to all contributors. The test suite should be run in a consistent environment and should be run in a way that allows contributors to run the tests locally. Examples of test suites include unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests.

    The CI pipeline (ci.yml) runs on every pull request targeting master and includes a full automated test suite: uv run pytest executes 850+ unit and integration tests. Branch protection requires the "Backend Tests" status check to pass before merge — no commit reaches master without the test suite passing.


    Enough for a badge!

    When the project has made a release, the project documentation MUST include design documentation demonstrating all actions and actors within the system. [OSPS-SA-01.01]
    Include designs in the project documentation that explains the actions and actors. Actors include any subsystem or entity that can influence another segment in the system. Ensure this is updated for new features or breaking changes.

    docs/architecture.md documents the system boundary, layer architecture, and integration patterns. docs/system-map.md provides component diagrams and data flow visuals covering all actors (vulnerability analysts, team leads, automation/CLI, external systems) and actions (CVE ingestion, ticket lifecycle, release detection, eligibility evaluation). Feature specifications in docs/features/ detail every action per domain (identity, tickets, packages, integrations, platform) including state machines, API operations, and background task behaviors.


    Enough for a badge!

    When the project has made a release, the project documentation MUST include descriptions of all external software interfaces of the released software assets. [OSPS-SA-02.01]
    Document all software interfaces (APIs) of the released software assets, explaining how users can interact with the software and what data is expected or produced. Ensure this is updated for new features or breaking changes.

    docs/api-spec.md provides the complete external API specification including endpoint paths, HTTP methods, request/response schemas, error codes, pagination, filtering, and authentication requirements. docs/data-sources.md catalogs all external system interfaces (NVD, MITRE, IBS/OBS, SMELT, AIMAAS, Bugzilla, RabbitMQ) with protocols, hosts, and data contracts. docs/cli-reference.md documents the CLI interface. The OpenAPI contract is auto-generated and published to GitHub Pages on each release, providing a machine-readable description of the full REST API surface.


    Enough for a badge!

    When the project has made a release, the project MUST perform a security assessment to understand the most likely and impactful potential security problems that could occur within the software. [OSPS-SA-03.01]
    Performing a security assessment informs both project members as well as downstream consumers that the project understands what problems could arise within the software. Understanding what threats could be realized helps the project manage and address risk. This information is useful to downstream consumers to demonstrate the security acumen and practices of the project. Ensure this is updated for new features or breaking changes.

    The project maintains an extensive docs/reviews/ directory with security review findings for every major component — over 50 review documents covering authentication, RBAC, networking, API specification, fetcher infrastructure, and all integration points. Each review includes findings from a dedicated @security-reviewer agent (among others), threat model assessments (e.g., brute-force resistance in local-authentication, trusted-upstream assumptions in networking, pre-disclosure data exposure in RBAC), and explicit risk acceptance decisions with rationale. The CI pipeline also runs bandit (static security analysis) and pip-audit (dependency vulnerability scanning) on every merge. Security-sensitive areas are subject to mandatory review per Guardrail 10.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project documentation MUST include a policy for coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD), with a clear timeframe for response. [OSPS-VM-01.01]
    Create a SECURITY.md file at the root of the directory, outlining the project's policy for coordinated vulnerability disclosure. Include a method for reporting vulnerabilities. Set expectations for how the project will respond and address reported issues.

    SECURITY.md defines a coordinated vulnerability disclosure policy: vulnerabilities are reported privately to security@suse.com, the team acknowledges receipt within 5 business days, provides an initial assessment within 15 business days, and coordinates disclosure timing with the reporter. The document explicitly requests reporters to allow a reasonable timeframe for remediation before public disclosure.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project documentation MUST provide a means for private vulnerability reporting directly to the security contacts within the project. [OSPS-VM-03.01]
    Provide a means for security researchers to report vulnerabilities privately to the project. This may be a dedicated email address, a web form, VCS specialized tools, email addresses for security contacts, or other methods.

    SECURITY.md directs reporters to email security@suse.com for private vulnerability disclosure. Additionally, GitHub's Private Vulnerability Reporting feature is enabled on the repository (visible in the Security tab), providing a second private channel directly integrated with GitHub's advisory workflow. Both mechanisms allow reporters to communicate directly with the project's security contacts without public exposure.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project documentation MUST publicly publish data about discovered vulnerabilities. [OSPS-VM-04.01]
    Provide information about known vulnerabilities in a predictable public channel, such as a CVE entry, blog post, or other medium. To the degree possible, this information should include affected version(s), how a consumer can determine if they are vulnerable, and instructions for mitigation or remediation.

    GitHub's Security Advisories feature is enabled on the repository, providing the standard mechanism to publicly publish data about discovered vulnerabilities (CVE assignment, affected versions, severity, remediation). SECURITY.md references the coordinated disclosure process that leads to public advisory publication once a fix is available. Any confirmed vulnerability would be published as a GitHub Security Advisory with full details (description, affected versions, CVSS score, remediation steps).



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Project badge entry owned by: Gianluca Gabrielli.
Entry created on 2026-08-13 13:55:49 UTC, last updated on 2026-08-14 06:09:03 UTC. Last achieved passing badge on 2026-08-13 16:48:08 UTC.